Clean the World Recycles Hotels’ Soap and Diverts Plastic Bottled Amenity Waste from Landfills.
At the core of every hotel is an unspoken agreement – to provide a place of comfort, relaxation, and responsible practices and to invoke memories that encourage consumers to happily return. Amongst the various luxuries and faultless services of the hospitality industry, it’s crucial to address an often-overlooked concern: the significant environmental impact of hotel waste from in-room amenities on the planet and local ecosystems. To help combat that waste, hospitality properties in the UK and around the world are taking a leap toward sustainability with Clean the World.
What is Sustainability?
Sustainability entails meeting the needs of today’s generation without compromising and being a detriment to future generations.
The UK hospitality industry is reported to contribute to a staggering 289,700 tons of waste annually. Like most other regions globally, a substantial amount of this waste finds its way into landfills in the UK, intensifying pollution and detrimentally affecting the local environment through soap chemicals seeping into the soil and different types of plastics decomposing into the ground.
However, Clean the World’s Global Hospitality Recycling Program offers hotels in the UK and globally the opportunity to combat hotel waste by diverting soap and plastic bottled amenity waste from landfills.
Founded in 2009, Clean the World has teamed up with over 8,300 hospitality partners worldwide, including many hotels throughout the UK. Clean the World’s straightforward yet profound objective is to divert soap bars and plastic amenities that the hospitality industry would otherwise discard from landfills and recycle the soap into new bars. This process diverts millions of pounds of waste from landfills annually, saves millions of gallons of water, decreases the carbon footprint of hotels, and supports millions of people in underserved communities domestically and internationally.
Clean the World, with the help of its partners, has created incredible impact over the years. To date, we have distributed over 83 million bars of soap to communities in need globally through the help of NGOs, diverted over 10 million kgs (26 million lbs) of waste from landfills, and prevented over 10 million kgs of CO2e from entering the atmosphere.
How Does Clean the World’s Soap Recycling Process Work?
Clean the World’s soap recycling process begins with collecting unused soap from hotels across the UK and beyond, which would otherwise end up in landfills. The soap is ground into pellets and finely refined to eliminate foreign particles. Then, the soap is sterilized, and manufactured into new 50-gram soap bars. Following the creation of soap, the soap is put through rigorous testing by fully accredited third-party laboratories in the EU. These laboratories test the newly made bars of soap for all contaminants and ensure compliance with strict EU cosmetic laws and regulations. Once approved, the soap bars are ready to be distributed to communities in need.
Sustainability is the Future of the Hospitality Industry
In a time when sustainability is an ever-growing topic, Clean the World’s Global Hospitality Recycling Program is an initiative of hope for the hotel industry. This program stands as a perfectly sustainable business model that naturally aligns with multiple sustainable development goals and supports the circular economy.
By embracing sustainable solutions such as Clean the World’s Global Hospitality Recycling Program, hotels across the UK and beyond can reduce their environmental footprint, support local communities, and become responsible for their impact.
